The 2015 Gathering Of The Juggalos Is Over

Yesterday was the final day of the Gathering of the Juggalos and it was a pretty fun one. Gotta make this update quick though because I drove to Indianapolis instead of editing photos and now I am about to photograph a really hot lady and then go get food with my friend and then edit four days of photos so I can get them to Rolling Stone and Noisey by the time my editors get into work tomorrow. Let’s go.

They day started off with a fantastic surprise. One of my favorite people, Angel Beau, just happened to be performing her strip circus act in Dayton, OH the weekend of the Gathering and so Freakshow Deluxe, one of the sideshow acts at the Gathering, drove to Dayton and grabbed her and had her perform with them. Their sideshow was rad and it was so awesome to see her there even if she was only around for an hour.

Day four also featured more fighting, more Busey Beauties and more bands. Mushroom Head was totally silly up close. Their masks look like mid level halloween masks and there are far too many people running around on their stage. Really weird. Waka Flocka on the other hand was fucking amazing. Juggalos started throwing shit at him and instead of leaving stage like other acts have done at the Gathering he just jumped into the crowd and played several songs while moshing and hugging juggalos. It was awesome. One of the best performances I’ve seen in my life.

Machine Gun Kelly was next and he puts on a great show even if I don’t love his music. Waka Flocka came out for his first song which was pretty great as well. I’ve photographed him backstage at the Woodie Awards, at the AVN Awards and now at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Pretty random. He did leave with all the Busey Beauties I was flirting with, but I guess I can’t blame him…

ICP ended the music portion of the night and as always they put on one of the most insane shows possible. I don’t care what you think of their music or their fans; if you ever get a chance to see them live do it. You will be blown away. They ended with a slow song instead of their usual closer and I guess they gave out Chinese lanterns because during their last song everyone lit them and the sky was filled with them which was fairly epic. Plus someone shot one down with a fire work which was fucking impressive. Juggalos do fucking shit up very well.

After ICP I saw Judah Friedlander’s comedy set which was mostly crowd work and very funny. I think rolled over to the wrestling matches for a second but it was crazy over there so I visited the mythical burrito man one final time and dipped out.

Here are a few photos from yesterday and then starting Monday I will start dropping several updates a day on the main site until you get to see everything I shot at the gathering. Get excited.

UPDATE: Noisey ran my juggalo fight club photos! Go look at them!

Angel Beau & Freakshow Delux

Waka Flocka @ Gathering of The Juggalos

Mushroom Head

Juggalo Dog

Machine Gun Kelly @ Gathering Of The Juggalos

ICP

Judah Friedlander @ Gathering Of The Juggalos

Comments (0)

Gathering Of The Juggalos Day 3

Day three of the Gathering of the Juggalos was my take it easy day. There wasn’t anything I actually really cared about photographing. I slept in and got some work done and even published my first article ever that was more writing than photos. Check it out over at Noisey:

WE FOLLOWED ELECTRONIC PUNK RAPPERS HO99O9 TO THEIR FIRST ‘GATHERING OF THE JUGGALOS’ FESTIVAL

So that was cool. I wish people would give me money to write sometimes, not because I am good at it or that it pays well, but writers get a lot more credit for articles. Whenever I collaborate on an article with a writer it instantly becomes their article even if it was my idea and their name is always bigger, etc, etc. Then again they have to do actual work and for the most part get paid even worse than photographers do so maybe fuck it. I don’t know.

Anyway, back to yesterday… The highlight was definitely another bare knuckle boxing match. If you remember Nebraska from last year, he was back and absolutely destroyed a huge dude who looked like he could throw down. They fought two rounds with gloves and any sane ref would have called the fight pretty much instantly but the Wolfpac are not exactly sane and made them take the gloves off after two rounds and the other dude took a hell of a beating. I got some crazy shots.

I only shot one band, Twiztid and I only took like 10 photos of them because I have shot them a million times and only juggalos care about them although they did a collab with Mishka and I sat in on an interview with them and they seem like pretty good dudes.

One of the reasons I didn’t shoot any bands is because I finally got the Gathering of the Juggalos tattoo I have been talking about for years! It was my first tattoo that I ever got while bugs were flying all over me. I just got Whoop Whoop! tattooed to my leg and the guy basically just did it by hand and jammed it in some random spot on my leg. I kinda love it even though some dude on Instagram told me he was unfollowing me because of it. Gonna miss him. 🙁

After Twiztid I went to one of the weird after parties because this insanely hot girl told me she was gonna be dancing there which is one of the few reasons I do anything in life. I took a handful of photos there and then decided to leave so I could get some work done since I gotta be down there kinda early today. On the way out I caught a few minutes of Big Jay Oakerson’s comedy set but he was doing vaguely homophobic sexist and racist jokes which isn’t really my thing cause I am not a bigot. Maybe that’s what he though juggalos would think is funny but he wasn’t exactly killing up there.

I can’t think of anything else interesting that happened yesterday so here’s some random photos of juggalos…

Juggalo Boxing

Juggalos

Twiztid

Big LA & Busey's Beauties

Juggalos

Big Jay Oakerson

Juggalos

Comments (0)